1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a circuit board, more particularly to a circuit board with a protection capability and to a method of protecting a circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the progress in semiconductor manufacturing technology, the performance and operational capability of semiconductor products have been enhanced to a considerable extent. In order to avoid problems of increased power consumption and heat generation that are associated with enhanced performance and operational capability of the semiconductor products, the trend in the current development of electronic products is toward low power consumption. As such, there are available in the marketplace products that comply with higher operating voltage specifications and those that comply with lower operating voltage specifications. For instance, the operating voltages of many of the components of a motherboard have been reduced, and the operating voltages of chip sets for data transmission between central processing units and peripheral devices have also been reduced, such as the INTEL 850/845 chip set, which supports a video card requiring an operating voltage of 1.5V.
Current video cards have different standards of accelerated graphics port (hereinafter referred to as AGP), e.g., 1x/2x/4x/8x. An AGP4x/8x video card operates at an operating voltage that is different from the earlier AGP1x/2x, which operates at 3.3V. Due to the difference in operating voltage, caution has to be exercised when mounting a video card on a motherboard lest that the components of the motherboard should be damaged. For instance, if an AGP1x/2x video card is connected to a motherboard employing an 845/850 chip set, an operating voltage of 3.3V will be supplied to the motherboard after activation, which is likely to result in damage to the components of the motherboard, such as the chip set.
To avoid the aforesaid problem, a video card is generally formed with a groove in a conductive terminal side thereof at a position corresponding to its operating voltage during manufacture, and a motherboard with a card slot for receiving the video card is correspondingly provided with a projection for engaging the groove in the video card. Hence, insertion of a video card that is not provided with the suitable groove is unable to fit into the card slot. However, as some manufacturers may form a 3.3V video card with a groove that is normally designed to identify a 1.5V video card, connection of the 3.3V video card to a card slot for a 1.5V video card is still possible and can result in damage to the chip set on the motherboard upon activation. Therefore, how to avoid the occurrence of the aforesaid situations has become an important topic in the industry.
A conventional video card is provided with a plurality of conductive terminals. A card slot on a motherboard for receiving the video card is provided with contacts corresponding to the conductive terminals so as to establish electrical connection between the video card and the motherboard. To facilitate connection between the video card and the motherboard, the design of the video card has to comply with certain rules. According to such rules, one of the conductive terminals of the video card, in the case of a 3.3V video card, remains disconnected or, in the case of a 1.5V video card, is grounded. Thus, if the operation of the motherboard can be inhibited when the aforesaid conductive terminal is in a disconnected state, possible damage to the chip set can be avoided.
Therefore, the main object of the present invention is to provide a method of protecting a circuit board, which can prevent connection of a video card of an incompatible operating voltage specification from damaging the circuit board.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a circuit board with a protection capability so as to reduce the possibility of damage thereto.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a circuit board with a protection capability, in which operation of the circuit board is inhibited when a video card of an incompatible operating voltage specification is connected to the circuit board.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the circuit board includes:
a power switch operable so as to generate a trigger signal upon actuation;
a card slot adapted for connecting with a video card; and
a controller coupled electrically to the power switch and the card slot, the controller detecting connection of the video card to the card slot and further detecting operating voltage of the video card, the controller inhibiting the power switch from generating the trigger signal upon detection that the operating voltage of the video card that is connected to the card slot is higher than a predetermined voltage.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a method for protecting a circuit board includes the steps of:
a) detecting whether an operating voltage of a video card that is connected to the circuit board is higher than a predetermined voltage; and
b) inhibiting operation of the circuit board upon detection that the operating voltage of the video card is higher than the predetermined voltage.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for protecting a circuit board that includes a power circuit for controlling supply of electrical power to the circuit board, and a card slot adapted for connecting with a card member that is one of a high-operating-voltage-specification integrated circuit card and a low-operating-voltage-specification integrated circuit card. The method includes the steps of:
detecting operating voltage of the card member that is connected to the card slot; and
inhibiting the power switch from generating the trigger signal upon detection that the card member that is connected to the card slot is the high-operating-voltage-specification integrated circuit card to prevent damage to the circuit board.